If you embrace change, you will be willing to start simple and continually refine. The design of e-learning courses is one of incremental change. Academic studies of online course development talk about this need for incremental change when addressing the typical lifecycle of development and maintenance.
• After the first course delivery, typically 20-30 percent of the course is changed based on instructor and student feedback.
• Following the second or third delivery, another 10-15 percent of the course is changed based on student and instructor experience.
• Subsequent changes tend to occur due to technology upgrades, current events that impact topical content, changes in experiential expectations of students, or sometimes the designer or developer learns a better way to work or to present learning opportunities that were not previously available.
In the higher education environment, courses are sometimes offered only once or twice a year, and sometimes even less often. In those cases, this change may happen over two or three years. The bottom line is: No matter how well designed the course is, it will need to be changed once it is delivered and you receive feedback. This argues even more for simple, quality design that meets the objectives but no more.